Chapter Seventeen, Oil and Lacquer Summary

Mary Malone is building a scientific instrument with which she can study Shadows. The inspiration comes to her after she burned a design on a piece of wood using the sun and the magnifying glass in her Swiss Army knife. Thinking back on what she learned at Oxford, she considers that in the future, if someone studies the design on the wood, they would see Shadows, since a being with consciousness created the design. She explains her thinking to her Mulefa friend Atal, and is astonished that Atal understand exactly what she's talking about. The Mulefa word for Shadows or Dust is Sraf, and they also recognize the distinction between children and adults. Atal says, without hesitation, that the Mulefa are 33,000 years old. Atal then tells a story, a "make-like," about how the Mulefa gained...